Wouldn’t Change A Thing

A little over a year ago, Joanne and I began thinking about buying our first house. Both of our parents were very happy for us and they all helped by contributing to our investment. Thanks!

For this reason, I thought that I would do something to show my appreciation. Since I’m an artist, I decided to create a very special painting for my parents. The walls of Joanne’s parents are filled with many portraits of Joanne – that I’ve created over the last 15 years – while my parents have just a few of my artworks… so I thought this would balance things out a bit!

The idea of creating a painting for my mom and dad had been in my mind for quite a while, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do…


… until the day when we were sorting through some of the photographs that my grandfather had left for us. I found this old photo taken at my parents’ wedding.

I was struck with a lightening flash of inspiration! What could make a better ‘Thank You’ gift than a portrait from their own wedding?!!!

I spent several hours at my computer, fiddling around with different croppings and other ideas until I had created an interesting image that I would use for my blueprint. Then I had to go to a special print shop to enlarge the image to the size of the canvas that I had bought, so that I could eventually trace the image onto the canvas.


I taped the enlarged image to the back of my artroom door, where I spent the next week simply looking at the image – sorting out in my mind the many things that I needed to sort out before I began the painting.

Let’s take a closer look while I share some of the thoughts that went through my designing mind…


First thoughts led me to create this image in a monochromatic style (one colour). Since I wanted to create an image that reflected time – in a sense – I thought that a ‘gray scale’ painting would be appropriate.

My next easy thought was to get rid of the candle burning in the foreground. It was distracting.


I spent many hours looking at the shapes and forms that are seen behind my dad’s head – intense whites and deep darks. I could have looked at the original photo to see where those shapes had originated from, but instead I let my imagination wander, to see if they would inspire something within me. At first the brilliant white shape shifted into an angel and I toyed around with this idea for some time. Maybe a guardian angel would be appropriate for a wedding portrait. This thought just wasn’t sitting with me.


By the third ‘think’ day I just had to look at the original photo to figure out what had created these forms. Simply, I saw that there was a picture of another couple framed and hanging on the wall behind my dad’s head. This gave me a totally different idea that I toyed around with for the next few days. I remembered an old Pink Floyd album where there was an image in the foreground with a picture in the background. The background picture looked just like the foreground one and it also had another image in its background and so on and so on. Thoughts of ‘history repeating’ were moving through my skull as I thought that it might be interesting to have a painting in the background of my painting with an image of another couple getting married – and in that painting there would be another painting in the background of a third couple getting married! These thoughts made me dizzy!!!

It’s always a lot of fun figuring out the designs for any art creation – even if many of the ideas never get used. I ended up following a sacred rule… KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)! I realized that I didn’t want a painting filled with symbols such as angels and I didn’t want to create an image that distracted from my original intentions – a simple portrait of two people in love cutting their wedding cake.


Next, I had to think about how I would fill the background. Quickly, I decided to create a simple texture using pointillism techniques. Since the left side of the image (the cake and my mom) is very light, I thought that I would create a texture to balance these tones by painting the background with dark colours. Since the right side of the image (my dad) is very dark, I thought that I would surround him with lighter background tones. The spaces in between would shift from the dark extreme to the light.


The final design elements that I had to consider where the almost white outlines and almost black outlines found throughout the image. At first I thought that these two lines did outline the cake, my mom and my dad completely, but I looked more closely and realized that this wasn’t quite so. So, I made it so!!!!! By extending a line here and there I was able to create two continuous lines of white and black that flowed through the entire image.

There! All my ideas where in place and now it was time to begin laying out the design that I would use.


After applying two coats of Gesso to the canvas – and letting them dry – I was ready to begin tracing the image onto the canvas. I taped four sheets of tracing paper together and made sure that they were facing the right way – graphite side down.


When I’m tracing an image I try not to think about what it is that I am tracing, but rather I focus just on the tones of colours and trace around them. This part of the image is my parents’ hands as they are cutting the cake. I didn’t try to trace the image of hands. I traced the groupings of colour tones found within and around their hands.


There! Tracing completed.

I’ve never been one to try to create a realistic representation of the subject that I am painting. If I wanted to do that I would have just enlarged the original photo and left it as is. By breaking down the photo into separate shapes based on colour tones I end up creating a ‘colour by number’ scheme and this give me a final image that is a bit more abstract. The colours and textures that I use create ‘moods’ and this is what art is all about, for me.

Now, for the paints…


This is my painting box, filled with small jugs of paints and empty mixing containers.


I mentioned that I wanted to create this painting in a ‘gray scale’ fashion, so many of you may think that I would simply use black and white paints. Rarely have I ever created a black colour using just black. And never do I use less than three pigments to create any colour for a painting.


The red and yellow will mix to create an orange colour. By adding a small amount of blue and a hint of purple I am able to push the orange into an umber or rust tone. My parents got married in the late autumn and rusty oranges are found during this season.


Then, I added lots of black to the orange to create the darkest tone for this painting. To this black I added a bit of white. To this colour I added a bit more white and so on until a complete gray scale had been created.


Many times, I will paint the border edge of the canvas first. This helps me to make sure that my colours are ‘good to go’ and it helps to get me in the painting frame of mind. I thought that I would try something new by adding three different colours onto my paintbrush before I applied the paint to the canvas.


Instead of painting a few strokes with the black and then adding strokes of the orange and then adding strokes of the gray colour, I dipped my brush into all three of these colours and then applied my strokes to the canvas. As you can see the colours blended themselves once applied to the canvas. I thought that this looked pretty cool!

Okay! The canvas has the design laid out, the paints have been mixed and I’ve completed my experiments and testing on the canvas border. Now it’s time to really get painting. To make this experience enjoyable for me, I always love to listen to some of my favourite bands…


Today, I thought that I would spend the afternoon listening to some of my vinyl records. I’ve got Cat Stevens and The Who from the 60’s and 70’s and Love & Rockets and The Alarm from the mid to late 80’s.


But first I’m going to slip on this Rolling Stones classic. Time to ROCK’N’ROLL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-G79h8y1U

Originally, my intention was to use only gray scale tones of my rusty/orangey/black for the entire painting. As soon as I started experimenting on the canvas border, these thoughts changed just slightly. I really, really loved the way the original rusty orange colour blended with the other gray scale colours and so I decided to use this colour some more on the actual painting… but just in the background. The rest of the design would still continue to be painted using only gray scale tones. It’s a little hard to see in this photo, but the occasional bits of the rusty orange colour really make the background sparkle with emotion.

The rest of the painting – the cake, my mom and dad – will be filled in with solid gray scale colours. I decided to use a texture that I’ve used many times in the past. I call it ‘Contour Painting’. I start by outlining a shape with the paint selected for that shape. Once this has dried, I paint another ‘row’ following the first outline. Eventually the shape gets smaller and smaller until it is filled in. It kinda looks like a topography map – or contour map – once it has been completed.


At the end of a very long and tiring day, I had managed to complete the entire background and most of the wedding cake. It was time to crack open a couple of cold beers, listen to some more music, sit back and spend time preparing my imagination for the most important phase of this artwork.


Since I had spent most of the afternoon, listening to music from my youth, I thought I’d bring myself into the new century and play a random selection of some of my newer CDs. I had some U2, Thornley, Mike Peters and Tegan & Sara ready to go!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfUD2N1tj7Y

It took me another five days to complete the wedding portrait for my parents – between shifts at work – and I had a great time! The only time I was really worried was when it was time to paint the faces. This always makes me nervous. I mentioned that during the designing phase I focus on tones of light and shadow, and not what the image really is. Faces always seem to do funny things when I follow these rules. Funny but good things!

I never actually try to paint ‘a nose’ or ‘the eyes’ or ‘the mouth’. The abstract way in which I break down the image still kinda baffles me, but it does seem to work.


There! Finally!! Done!!!


I think the neatest things in this painting are the white and black lines that flow throughout the entire design. Everything is outlined with these two colours. The outline begins near the bottom left – by the cake, then it sweeps over the cake to follow around the hands, just catching a bit of the wedding dress before it travels up my mom’s right arm and around her wedding veil. The line continues by becoming a part of my dad’s hair and then it circles his ear, traces his jaw and nose before joining up with his jacket until it traces the table and then exits at the lower right side of the canvas.

I’ve interpreted these two symbols in a fun way. The white outline is for my mom, the female, the guiding light. The black outline is for my dad, the man, the one who needs guiding – ha! ha! They are on a journey together but sometimes they become momentarily separated (the white and black line are not always side by side) as each line (person) journeys through life. The white outline is more efficient as it takes the most direct route through the painting. The black outline tends to go for small adventures and gets easily distracted but eventually finds its path again.

Hmmmmm…. that story sounds a bit more like my life with Joanne!!!!!

It took me a few more days until I had the title for this painting. I had thought of some obvious titles like “The Wedding”, “Autumn Love”, etc. and then suddenly “Wouldn’t Change A Thing” popped into my head. This title refers to a few things. We all go through so many experiences in life that shape us into who we are. Some experiences may not be as pleasant as others’ but it’s always healthy to reflect on these changes with no regrets – to have accepted the consequences of all of our decisions.

When I told Joanne the title that I had chosen, she laughed cuz she knew that my mom might have something to say about that – I’m always reminded of my years as a crazy teenager and how I drove my parents a little nuts! I laughed even harder and said, “Yeah, I know, that’s what makes the title so perfect. If I had been a better behaved teenager, stuck with one of my many decent jobs and had not become the free spirited ‘Earth Lover’ travelling around the country with just a few pennies in my pocket learning about art and life then this painting would never have been created.”

This has been a rather wordy blog – even for me – but I really want people to have a deeper appreciation for all the things that go into an art creation. Art isn’t just the final image that people see. Art isn’t simply a symbol of reflection. Art is a unique and special moment of inspiration catapulted through time, surrounded by life and evoked through labor with love.

Jim

What 55 Hours Looks Like

So… I’m hoping that none of my regular blog readers have been thinking that I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth – LOL! – since it’s been a while since my last entry! I’ve been extremely busy – dealing with the local transit strike, end of school year activities AND completing my latest commissioned pet portrait.


Michael responded to one of my advertisements for ‘pet portraits’ this last summer. His companion of just over nine years past away in the spring and he had asked me to paint Digger’s portrait. I was deeply honoured to be given such a responsibility.

I had two other commissions to finish first, then I went almost two months without doing any artwork at all (while searching for, buying and moving into a new home!) and as soon as we moved the local transit union went on strike – shutting down all bus services in London – which ended up costing me over two hours a day as I had to find alternative ways to get to and from work… leaving very little time for anything else.

I really wanted to have Digger’s portrait finished before the christmas holidays so I had to make some personal sacrifices – no blogging, no facebook, no emails, no nothing except the painting. Joanne was (as always) a wonderful support as she took over my regular household duties – laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc – to give me every moment possible to complete this art. I missed my christmas dinner with my co-workers, cancelled a few weekend socials so I could lock myself in my artroom with my paints and brushes.

As is often the case, I find my adrenaline pumps with more life when I’m feeling ‘under the crunch’. I enjoy totally submersing myself with my work and then when it’s done, I always enjoy a feeling of completion which allows me to totally relax for a few days before I’m at it again – with my next project!!!

So… here’s how the project went –


By hour 10 the paint had just started to flow. To get to this point I had to select the proper size board for the painting, prep it with several coatings of Gesso (a base coat), scan the original photo and play around with different effects before I could print the image in order to trace it onto the board.


The first four hours of painting is usually my slowest. I can spend up to one hour mixing just one colour – though in most cases this task still takes about twenty minutes per colour. It’s so very important to bring a consistency to the paint pallet – to make every colour relate to each other on some level – and this is always very challenging.


This photo shows how the paint is applied. I call this technique ‘contour painting’. Each shape in the painting becomes unique unto itself and I focus on these shapes as individual entities. Using a very small brush I simply – though very time consuming – trace around the inside of the shape. As each ‘contour’ is painted, I begin this process again, slowly filling in the entire shape.

On the right hand side you can see that there are a few additional inches of board space that I was originally hoping to fill in with an expanded beach texture…


…as this was already my 18th hour I had to figure out how I could alter my design so that this painting didn’t take me until the new year to complete. Simply, I got rid of the beach design element. I figured that the portrait was to be of Digger and so the beach was expendable.



This is when I started to have a lot of fun. All the main colours had been mixed and now it was time to start bringing in the highlights or complementary tones that would give this painting a little more ‘shazam!’ There were quite a few of these colours needed.


By hour 43 all the highlight colours were mixed.

The thing that I like most about painting is the way that the colours all work together. Digger is a black labrador and it’s interesting to see how the colour black is not used in this painting at all. His face is painting using three shades of green, four shades of red/brown, two shades of gold, three shades of red and purple, but it all seems to work!!!


The most spiritual part of any portrait comes to life when the eyes are painted. I was really starting to feel the excitement building when I reached this portion of the painting.


To look at the design elements – or breakdown in shapes and colour – of the eyes, you would never say that the eyes look like eyes. They seem to be unrelated shapes of different colour just floating around space together.


But when all the colours have grounded each other together… and you stand back a few feet to look, something magical happens. The eyes seem to have a fine gloss over them, which really surprised me, that totally gives them a different aura when compared to the rest of the painting – even tho’ all the same colours are used and nothing special was added to the paint to produce this effect.

Ha – after fifteen years, this world of art that I love to frequently visit still astounds me with all of its mysteries.

Now, all that was left to paint was the stick and the beach.


This happens quite a lot – something in an uncompleted texture grabs my imagination and says ‘Stop painting… look at me… be inspired’. My plans for the beach included about eight different colours, but after I had painted just the first colour I had to stop.

Sometimes this ‘stopping’ phase will result in a change in plans for the rest of the painting. Sometimes it just gives my imagination fuel for a possible future initiative. When I get to this point I know that it’s time to quite for the day – to give my imagination time to have its battle with itself until the morning.

I woke up yesterday morning with a big smile on my face. My mind’s battle had ended and I knew what I needed to do to finish the last few hours of my work. I completed the painting as I had originally planned and the texture idea that the incomplete beach gave me became a sketch in the back of my mind. I’m planning to paint a wall mural very soon and this new texture will be playing a part in that design – I’m almost positive!


At 2:34 pm on December 22, 2009 Digger was done!!!

Since Digger has passed away I didn’t want to give the painting a mournful title like ‘Digger Will Be Missed’ or anything stooooopid like that. A television commercial came to my brain and I heard its slogan ‘Time Well Wasted’ – referring to the comedy network. I was looking at the portrait and thinking of the stick in Digger’s mouth and I said to Digger, “Ha – looks like your stick is well tasted!”… and then the title ‘Time Well Tasted’ came into being.

I thought that this title was perfect. Digger had passed away quickly due to cancer so he never had the chance to live his full life – all he got was a taste of life and by judging the happy expression in his photos I thought that his taste was a good one.


I met with Michael last evening and he absolutely and positively-tooting just LOVED it!!!! We talked about his dog, we talked about this painting, we talked about a wonderful number of things and we were both very glad for this experience.

So, for those of you who thought I had fallen off the face of the Earth, please be assured that that was not the case. I just took a little vacation with my paints to visit a special friend.

Jim

Where The Children Play

I’m always happiest when I’m working on a commissioned painting. I’m sure that you will agree that it is one of the highest forms of flattery an artist can receive. I always put my best efforts into these paintings because I know that the artwork is of a very personal nature for my client – because it’s usually a painting of a family member or pet.

I’ve always found most portraits to be rather boring and lacking in personality – even if the painting is masterfully created. An image of a person sitting in a chair with a forced smile just doesn’t ‘turn me on’. I always try to create a scene with the subject being involved in the environment in some way.


This is a portrait of my wife’s boss’s kids. Julia has always complemented me on my painting skills and last June she decided that it was time for me to create a painting for her. She gave me a small selection of photos with her two children that were taken about four years ago when they were on a vacation in Northern Ontario.

In all the art classes I teach, it is always very important for me to emphasize the importance of ‘texture’ – how the paint is applied to the canvas. There are so many different ways of creating texture and I’d say that it is probably the most important aspect of any work that I do. I had a really cool idea for the texture of this painting that would add much more dynamics to the final product.

I overlaid a second image onto the outline of the children in the boat. It was a very simple image, but it gave me the ‘formula’ for the texture I would be creating. Since the children were in a boat, on vacation, in Northern Ontario, I decided to create this simple image to symbolize this.


The water is symbolized with simple wavy lines that fill the bottom half of the painting. The trees of Northern Ontario are drawn to the left side (there’s four of them) of the image and the sun (symbolizing happiness and peace) fills the remaining space – being drawn with circles that get larger from the central point.

So… while the colours of the painting were designed around the two children, on a small boat with water in the background, the way these colours were placed on the canvas followed the second image of water, trees and sun. This was an extreme test of my patience and organizational skills. A great challenge, indeed!!!

Then it was time for the title of the artwork. Luckily this came to me very quickly. During most painting sessions, I usually listen to music – either a mixed cassette, CD or even a record – yes that’s right – a vinyl album. On one of the days I was listening to Cat Steven’s ‘Tea for the Tillerman’ and the song “Where Do The Children Play?” began. I’ve always enjoyed Cat Steven’s philosophy concerning ‘man’ and the ‘environment’ – it was through listening to his songs that I became aware of our civilizations need to evolve peacefully above oppressing industrialism. Here are some of this song’s lyrics…

Where Do The Children Play?

Well you roll on road
Over fresh green grass
For your lorry loads
Pumping petrol gas

Well you’ve cracked the sky
Scrapers fill the air
Will you keep on building higher
‘Til there’s no more room up there?

I know we’ve come a long way
We’re changing day to day
But tell me –
Where do the children play?

I had a smile on my face when I titled this painting. I sent a thought out into the world, “Tell Cat Stevens that I’ve just answered his question… I do know ‘Where The Children Play’.”

Jim

The Face of Love

Way back, in 1996, I had discovered that I had a natural gift for creative art expression. I had finished my ‘walk’ to raise awareness about the destruction of the Temagami forestland (http://www.bitsandpeaces.com/tttintro01.htm ) and now I was spending all my time developing my skills as an artist. My girlfriend – now wife – Joanne was very supportive, working very hard at her job so that I could continue to create my art. It was getting close to her birthday and I thought that I would surprise her with a portrait of herself. She was very surprised and she loved the ink drawing that I had created for her.

Since that time, I have surprised Joanne with several portraits. I try to create something for her every few years. ‘The Face of Love’ was the painting that I created for her in 2005.

This painting is constructed using words and sentences to tell Jo’ how I feel about her. If you look really closely you will see that this painting has a unique texture using three shades of blue, green and purple to construct these words. More than once, it is written in the painting “I love Joanne”. Circling around these significant words are other sentences: ‘Your smile is brighter than the morning sun’, ‘Your eyes reflect all the love that exists in the universe’, ‘I am Joanne’s number one fan’ and others. Throughout this painting I have also included many heart shapes and between these and the words I filled the space with a kazillion (LOL) wiggly lines.

Joanne is such a huge light in my life and I love her more and more every day. I’ve always felt that it is important to find new and exciting ways to say ‘thank you’ to those who fill your life with love.

Jim